Learning to play the guitar over an extended timeline is quite a journey. It requires a lot of different steps, and no two people go through it the same way. However, there are always ways to break it down into a number of different pieces, and it’s good to go into your particular pathway by understanding what those pieces are.
So, if you’re thinking about the musical jaunt of learning to play and perform with the guitar, then you can start at the beginning, advance with the purchase of new equipment, learn theory as you go along, and then bring it all together in terms of production, performance, and the potential for singer-songwriter status.
Starting At the Beginning
Every journey starts with a single step, and when it comes to playing guitar, that means you have to choose the best guitar for a beginner. There are almost an infinite number of options, but obviously you want to go with the least expensive musical instrument that you can that will still allow you to develop skills in a way that makes sense. Purchasing a guitar that gives you bad habits is not a good idea. Spending too much money on a guitar that you will get frustrated with is also a bad idea. Take your first steps logically.
Advancing With Equipment
Once you start getting some of the basics down, you can start buying more equipment for your guitar. Depending on if you choose the acoustic or electric pathways, you can buy an amp that coincides with your goal of how loud you want to be, and what kind of a tone you want to present. Once again, the options are amazing when it comes to different types of amps for different types of situations. And there is a lot of trial and error will be involved during this step.
Learning Theory
A step that many people skip unfortunately is learning about music theory. You can go a long way playing guitar without really understanding the in-depth aspects of music theory. However, the more that you choose to learn about how music works, and how the physics of music affects your guitar playing, the more you may learn to appreciate the overall value of what you’re doing. You don’t necessarily need to play jazz either. Music theory works in every genre.
Bringing It All Together
In the end, everything that you learn to do, and everything that you buy past all come together in some sort of a concluding package. This might be that you enjoy playing guitar on your own as a therapeutic process. Or, you may choose the rockstar route and try to figure out how to get a band together in order to play for people. Or, you can try and be a guitar studio musician and just have control over the production elements. The end of your journey will probably have a lot to do with what you learned along the way.
